Ilya Simonov told him.
XVIII
Driving back to the office, Larry let it pile up on him.
Ernest Self had been a specialist in solid fuel for rockets. Professor Voss had particularly stressed his indignation about Professor Goddard, the rocket pioneer, and how he had been treated by his contemporaries. Frank Nostrand had been employed as a technician on rocket research at Madison Air Laboratories. It was too damn much for coincidence.
And now something else that had been nagging away at the back of his head suddenly came clear.
Susan Self had said that she and her father had seen the precision dancers at the New Roxy Theater in New York and later the Professor had said they were going to spend the money on chorus girls. Susan had got it wrong. The Rockettes—the precision chorus girls. The Professor had said they were going to expend their money on
But billions of dollars, counterfeit dollars at that, expended on rockets? How? But, above all, to what end? How could that possibly help the Movement?
As Ilya Simonov had said, Professor Voss and his people were hardly capable of bombing Greater Washington or whatever. Weirds they all might be but they weren’t homicidal maniacs.
If he’d only been able to hold onto Susan, or her father; or to Voss or Nostrand, for that matter. Someone to work on. But each had slipped through his fingers.
Which brought something else up from his subconscious. Something which had been nagging at him. He pondered it for awhile, coming up with semi-answers.
At the office, Irene Day was packing her things as he entered. Packing as though she was leaving for good.
“What goes on?” Larry growled, rounding his desk and seating himself. “I’m going to be needing you more than ever. Things are coming to a head.”
She said, a bit snippishly, Larry thought, “Miss Polk, in the Boss’ office said for you to see her as soon as you came in, Mr. Woolford. She also gave me instructions to return to the secretary’s pool for reassignment.”
“Oh?” he said mystified.
He made his way to LaVerne’s office, his attention actually on the ideas still churning in his mind.
She looked up when he entered and there was something in her face he didn’t quite understand.
“Hi, Larry,” she said, flicking off the phone screen, in her bank of phone screens, into which she had been talking.
Larry said, “The Boss wanted to see me?”
LaVerne ducked her head, as though embarrassed. “Well, not exactly, Larry.”
He gestured with his thumb in the direction of his own cubicle office. “Irene just said you wanted to see me. She also said she was being pulled off her assignment with me, which is ridiculous. I’m just getting used to her. I don’t want to have to break in another girl.”
LaVerne looked up into his face. “The Boss and Mr. Foster, too, are boiling about your authorizing that Distelmayer man to bill this department for information he gave you. The Boss hit the roof. Something about the Senate Appropriations Committee getting down on him if it came out that we bought information from professional espionage agents, particularly material that this department is supposed to ferret out on its own.”
Larry said, “It was information we needed and needed quickly, and Foster gave me the go ahead on locating Ilya Simonov. Maybe I’d better go in and see the Boss and explain the whole damned mess. I’ve got some other stuff I have to report to him, anyway.”
LaVerne said, and there was apology in her voice, “I don’t think he wants to see you, Larry. They’re up to their ears in this Movement thing. It’s in the papers now and nobody knows what to do next. The department is beginning to become a laughing stock, which is probably one of the things the Movement wanted to accomplish. The President is going to make a speech on Tri-Di, and the Boss has to supply the information for the speech writers. His orders are for you to resume your vacation and to take a full month off and then see him when you get back.”
Larry sank down into a chair. “I see,” he breathed. “And at that time he’ll probably give me an assignment to mop out the men’s room.”
“Larry,” LaVerne said, almost impatiently, “why in the world didn’t you take that job Walt Foster has now when the Boss offered it to you?”
“Because I’m stupid, I suppose,” Larry said bitterly. “I thought I could do more working alone in the field than at an administrative post tangled in red tape and bureaucratic routine. If I’d taken the job I could now be slitting Walt’s throat instead of his slitting mine.”
She said, “Sorry, Larry.” And she sounded as though she really meant it.
Larry stood up. “Well, tonight I’m going to hang one on, and tomorrow it’s back to Astor, Florida and the bass fishing.” He added, in a rush, “Look, LaVerne, how about that date we’ve been talking about for six months or more?”
She looked up at him, question in her eyes, wary question. “I can’t stand vodka martinis.”
“Neither can I,” he said glumly.
“And I don’t get a kick out of prancing around, a stuffed shirt among stuffed shirts, at some going-on that supposedly improves my culture status.”
Larry said, “At the house, I have every known brand of drinkable, and a stack of… what did you call it?… corny music. We can mix our own drinks and dance all by ourselves. I even know some old time swing steps.”
She tucked her head to one side and looked at him suspiciously. “Are your intentions honorable? A nice girl doesn’t go to a man’s home, all alone.”
“We can even discuss that later,” he said sourly. “How about it, LaVerne? You can help me drown my sorrows.”
She laughed. “It’s a date, Larry.”
He picked her up after work and they drove to his Brandywine district auto-bungalow, and both of them remained largely quiet the whole way.
He didn’t even comment when she said, “Walt Foster requested today that I locate him a new apartment in the Druid Hill section of Baltimore. It will double his rent, but I assume that he is expecting a raise.”
At one point she touched his hand with hers and said, “It’ll work out, Larry. Things have a way of always working out. It might even turn out for the best.”
“Yeah,” he said sourly. “I’ve put ten years into ingratiating myself with the Boss. Now, overnight, he’s got a new boy. I suppose there’s some moral involved.”
When they pulled up before his auto-bungalow, LaVerne whistled appreciatively. “Quite a neighborhood you’re in Larry. It must set you back considerably.”
He grunted. “A good address. What our friend Professor Voss would call one more status symbol, one more social label. For it, I pay about fifty percent more than my budget can afford.”
He ushered her inside and took her jacket.
“Look,” he said, indicating his living room with a sweep of his hand. “See that volume of Klee reproductions there next to my reading chair? That proves I’m not a weird. Indicates my culture status. Actually, my appreciation of modern art doesn’t go any further than the Impressionists. But don’t tell anybody. See those books up on my shelves? Same thing. You’ll find everything there that ought to be on the shelves of any ambitious young career man.”
She looked at him from the side of her eyes. “You’re really soured, Larry. As long as I’ve known you I don’t believe I’ve ever heard you so bitter.”
“Come along,” he said. “I want to show you something. An inkling of just how bitter I can be.”
He took her down the tiny elevator to his den. Off hand, he couldn’t remember twenty people being down here in the five or six years he had lived in this house.
He said, “You’re unique, LaVerne. You’re the only girl I’ve ever shown my inner secrets to.”
